Starting Dork Sports
Dorks in our community do more than just dance. We have other interests and curiosities too, with an appetite to diversify our mental health practice. We’d love to release energy in new ways that are fun and good for mental health. With that in mind, a new idea/ initiative has emerged, Dork Sports.
Dork Sports carries the same MENTAL mission that all of our Dork initiatives hold. Dork Sports aims to overcome challenges in mental health. Sports present an incredible opportunity to bring people together. It’s easy to identify sports as a healthy activity good for health, but those benefits are not just physical. It’s emotional, social, and even spiritual.
Many people play sports, without saying it outright, because it helps keep them sane. Sports is a kind of meditation. Something that people can practice & go towards in moments of difficult emotion. For us, that’s something we experience directly.
When feeling angry, pick up the ball. When feeling sad, pick up the ball. When feeling excited, pick up the ball. When feeling anxious, pick up the ball. The ball is your friend. It won’t bite back. It’s there for you. Sports are a healthy way to express and channel emotions.
Sports is also an incredible way to bring people together from all walks of life. By picking up a ball, you invite possibility to pass it. The ball is passed to another player. That player is your teammate. You share a common goal. You are working together as one. As one improves, so does the other. Sports bridges differences while reflecting our human nature. It is something tribal, and its deeply bonding when shared, in active participation, over time.
There’s a reason why the Olympics presents such wonderful opportunity for the world. It’s a time and space when we can come together to engage in impressive, creative, and powerful play on display. Yes its competitive, but it’s also something peaceful, harmonizing, and beautiful to witness. Despite divisions in borders, politics, and national pride, the olympics and sports reveals our humanity. We’re all people, human, playing for a common cause and purpose. We want to be the best. Sports can bring that out of us.
And yes, sports can be a spiritual practice too. In moments of friendly or competitive play, it becomes easier to get lost in the magic of the moment. Time melts and your presence becomes focused into the new playfield. Problems seem to dissolve as you forget about yourself and surrender to unpredictability of play directly in front of you. A spiritual purpose of play becomes clear when you experience sport through presence. With practice, that heightens, along with your appreciation for it. It becomes enough to simply play, to be lost in play. Losing yourself and finding yourself happen simultaneously.
Sports can be meditative and safe. Unifying and harmonizing. A force for good emotionally, socially, and spiritually.
The power and potential of sport to heal and help individuals and communities is truly immense. It connects us to energy that helps. Dork Sports is designed to tap into this power. Even though the benefits are serious, our play is light.
What differentiates Dork Sports from Sports is an acknowledgement that we are here for our mental health and it doesn’t matter “how good or bad” we might be at playing. It’s not about performance and judgement. Instead it’s about curiosity, connection, and care. We’re dorks, we can shoot the ball and miss the target by a mile. It’s funny, something we can laugh about.
If you love sports competitively, and happen to be really “good,” then that’s OK too. Dork Sports is inclusive of different relationships and competitive intensities, so long as your purpose remains aligned to our mental health cause, practicing acceptance, care, and connection within and for our community.
Dork Sports started simply, with Dork Dancers Michael and Olga. They are good friends. They like to play sports together. And they invited us to play with them because sports is better with more friends. It’s pretty simple. See you every Thursday at 8:30AM to play! All dorks are welcomed.